Page 18 of The Life We Left Behind

You were the very best thing I ever did in my life. The only thing I could never possibly regret. My beautiful, wonderful daughter.

I’ll be watching you from the stars. Now go and make me proud.

Dad

The tears had started falling as soon as I’d read my name. I didn’t know he felt like this, and I hated that he’d died thinking he’d done so much wrong. How could he ever think he’d failed me?

As I swiped the tears from my eyes, they fixed in the distance on the one place I needed to be. It made so much sense that it brought a smile to my face. I shoved the letter deep in my jacket pocket and jogged down the back steps, heading to the same part of the fence I’d hopped so many times over the years. I knew I’d read his letter again. There was so much to try to understand about my father. So much I didn’t know about him. And it made sense to do that in the one place that I’d always been able to find peace.

CHAPTER SEVEN

TRACE

The wet grass soaked the bottom of my slacks as I walked through the long grass. I was supposed to be at the office right now preparing for yet another meeting, but for some reason, I was here instead. There were so many reasons why I shouldn’t be. First and foremost, I was technically trespassing. I’d been here so many times before, though. It had been the spot I always came when life got too much for me as a kid.

Our refuge.

I hadn’t been here in years. It didn’t feel right after everything that happened, but I needed it now. I needed that sense of calm only this place had ever given me.

Picking up a stone, I rolled it in my fingers as I stared out across the still pond.

At twenty-eight, I was supposed to have my shit figured out. Yet everything still felt like such a mess. I’d made so many mistakes, and my life was in complete chaos. It wasn’t just Chelsea. It was everything. And I was goddamn tired of it all.

Maybe it was the deal and the pressure of what it meant for the town. No one else saw it yet, but my father had raised hisconcerns with me before I went to college. The more I dug into my business degree, the more I realized how right he was.

Willowbrook was dying, and no one was even aware of it yet.

We were a small town. People came and left, and life went on at the usual pace. But that was part of the problem. We had an expanding aging population, and the younger generations were leaving to seek a brighter future in the city. It wasn’t sustainable, and this was how small towns died.

We needed an injection of not just capital but residents, and the best way we could see to do that was to make Willowbrook an attractive tourist spot. We were lucky that the land was so beautiful around here. We just needed something to draw them in.

Hence, the deal that was keeping me up at night with its impossible logistics. The cost of failure was unthinkable, but right now we were hanging by a thread. Frustratingly, it wasn’t even the investors which had been surprisingly easy. It wasn’t hard to sell the dream of Willowbrook. The land, on the other hand, was a different story. Getting together enough land in one location to move ahead was the kicker. It wasn’t easy to persuade people to part with something that had not only been in their family for generations but was their home. It went against what we were trying to accomplish, and needless to say, it wasn’t sitting well on my conscience.

As the frustration built inside me, I pulled back my arm and launched the rock into the pond. A sigh left me as I watched the ripples spread across the surface. So many memories revolved around this one spot, and none of them had been bad because Delaney was here with me.

I scuffed my shoes through the dirt as memories of the past flooded me, and I turned from the pond to keep walking its perimeter.

It wasn’t quite the same here now. I’d thought it would settle me like it used to, but the magic it had once held was no longer there. Or maybe it was because I was alone this time. Perhaps that was the difference. I’d never been alone when I’d come here before.

I’d thought seeing Booker would help with the chaos in my mind, but for the first time in a long time, it made it worse. Book got out of the family and started his own life. He’d seen the thing that made him happy and walked straight toward it without ever looking back.

Why couldn’t I do that?

A scoff burst out of me because I knew the answer straight away. I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have a dream for the future anymore. I was stuck in the dream that someone else had made for me, and while there were days when it felt like my own, there were also some days, like today, when the loneliness reminded me that it wasn’t.

But how was I supposed to go from where I was now to what I wanted, if I could ever figure out what that was? I couldn’t turn my back on the town, not when I knew what I did. Willowbrook had done so much for me. The people had always been there for me when I needed them. Maybe sacrificing my happiness for the next few years was how I repaid them for that. It couldn’t last forever, right?

Marrying Chelsea had been the single worst decision in my entire life. In fact, I’m not even sure it had been my decision now that I was looking back on it. How pathetic was that?

Neither of us had been happy. I didn’t even think we were in the beginning, either. It all just seemed to happen because that was what was expected of us. Then, once it was done, and the unhappiness had grown into resentment, all we did was psychologically torture each other like we were looking for some kind of blame.

My eyes skated over the all too familiar bank, finding the old willow tree that I’d spent so many hours sitting beneath.

With her.

This was my happy place.

And I could just imagine her sitting there now. Delaney. The girl who had once been my everything, and the ending of that single most perfect thing in my life had sent me spiraling into the chaos that followed.

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